Why (and How) to Teach Your Children Civics

By Julianna Dotten

Civics is not only a required subject by the Colorado Homeschool Law, it’s crucial to preparing our children to be well-informed citizens of our country.

That’s why CHEC is excited to announce our most recent publication: Colorado Civics: K-12 Civics and History for Colorado Homeschool Families. The 250-page textbook is set up unit-study style with unique images, book suggestions, activities, and field trip ideas built in to each lesson, allowing you to tailor the content to your student’s abilities. Units include The Founding of Our Government, The Bill of Rights, The Election Cycle, Patriotic Symbols, Colorado History, Godly Citizenship and Political Action, and more.

Get a sneak peak into the book with this excerpt from the introduction:

“These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment.

They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try to services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.” — Thomas Jefferson’s Inaugural Address

No doubt, that moment of wandering has been a long one. As a nation, we’ve slipped considerably from the “bright constellation” of the Founders’ principles. The vision of liberty that Washington, Jefferson, and Adams held dear is fading — and fading fast. And now, more than ever, it is high time to retrace our steps, re-educate our youth, and return to principles of our founding. That’s where civics comes in.

As Jefferson implied, the liberty we enjoy in America cannot merely be the creed of our political faith, it must form the text of our civic instruction. The next generation must be taught — and taught deliberately — those principles central to maintaining our system of government.

What exactly is civics? In a nutshell, civics is the study of how our government works and the part we play in it. We study civics to understand how God uses ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things in the realm of politics.

Take Patrick Henry. If anything characterized Patrick Henry’s early life, it was failure. His first two businesses went bankrupt. His farming attempt left him in the red. And fire demolished his young family’s home.

His life was ordinary — if not unusually difficult. But he had a will, and six weeks of reading borrowed law texts transformed him into the fiery patriot whose “Give me Liberty” speech left an indelible impression on our history.

That’s the beauty of our form of government. It doesn’t take nobility to change the course of our nation. Ordinary people can make their voices heard — in the voting booth, through lobbying, and even in positions of leadership at the Capitol.

You don’t necessarily need a lot of money or an elite ancestry. If you work hard and care for others, you can influence this great nation we call home.

In reality, involvement in politics in inevitable. If you live in this country, you have an impact on the course of our history, either for worse or for better. Even if you do nothing but sit in your house, you’re making a clear statement to our government: “I don’t care to exercise my rights, and I would rather you make all the decisions for me.”

Those who want the government to spoonfeed them wake up to find tyranny at the end of the spoon.

Our system of government was intended to be ruled by people – and that means you! Throughout this course, you will learn not only how to get involved in your federal, state, and local levels but also how this country was originally designed and what that means for you as the next generation of American citizens.

 

Learn more and purchase here